The last theoretical question that interests us in Sismondi's system of views is the question of protectionism. In the *Nouveaux Principes*, considerable space is devoted to this question, but it is examined there more from a practical side – in connection with the movement against the Corn Laws in England. We shall examine this last question below, since it encompasses still other, broader questions. Here we are interested for now only in Sismondi's point of view on protectionism. The interest of this question lies not in any new economic concept of Sismondi's that did not enter into the preceding exposition, but in his understanding of the connection between "economics" and the "superstructure." Efrussi assures readers of *Russkoye Bogatstvo* that Sismondi is "one of the first and most talented precursors of the contemporary historical school," that he rises up "against the isolation of economic phenomena from all other social factors." "In Sismondi's works is carried through the view that economic phenomena ought not to be isolated from other social factors, that they ought to be studied in connection with facts of a socio-political character" (*R.B.* No. 8, pp. 38–39). Let us then see, in the example taken, how Sismondi understood the connection between economic phenomena and socio-political ones.

"Import prohibitions," says Sismondi in the chapter "on customs" (Book IV, ch. XI), "are equally unreasonable and equally ruinous as export prohibitions: they have been invented in order to present a nation with a manufacture that it did not yet possess; and one cannot deny that for an emerging industry they are equivalent to the strongest encouragement premium. This manufacture produces perhaps scarcely one hundredth part of the total quantity of goods of that kind consumed by the nation: one hundred buyers will have to compete with each other to obtain goods from a single seller, while ninety-nine to whom he refuses will be forced to make do with contraband goods. In this case the loss for the nation will equal 100, and the gain – will equal 1. Whatever advantages this new manufacture may give to the nation, there is no doubt that they are too few to justify such great sacrifices. It would always have been possible to find less wasteful means to call forth the activity of such a manufacture" (I, 440-441).

This is how simply Sismondi resolves this question: protectionism is "unreasonable" because the "nation" loses by it!

What "nation" is our economist speaking of? With what economic relations does he compare this given socio-political fact? He takes no specific relations; he reasons in general about the nation as it ought to be according to his conceptions of the Ought. And these conceptions of the Ought, as we know, are constructed on the exclusion of capitalism and on the dominance of petty independent production.

But this is indeed utter absurdity – to compare a socio-political factor that pertains to a given economic structure and to it alone with some imagined structure. Protectionism is a "socio-political factor" of capitalism, while Sismondi compares it not with capitalism, but with some nation in general (or with a nation of petty independent producers). He might perhaps have compared protectionism even with an Indian commune and obtained an even more vivid "unreasonableness" and "ruinousness," but this "unreasonableness" would have pertained just as much to his comparison, not to protectionism. Sismondi adduces a childish calculation to prove that protection benefits very few at the expense of the masses. But there is nothing to prove here, since this already follows from the very concept of protectionism itself (regardless of whether it be a direct subsidy or the elimination of foreign competitors). That protectionism expresses a social contradiction is indisputable. But are there no contradictions in the economic life of the structure that created protectionism? On the contrary, it is completely full of contradictions, and Sismondi himself noted these contradictions throughout his entire exposition. Instead of deriving this contradiction from those contradictions of the economic structure that he himself established, Sismondi ignores the economic contradictions, transforming his argument into a completely vacuous "innocent wish." Instead of comparing this institution, which serves, according to his words, the interests of a small group, with the position of this group in the entire economy of the country and with the interests of this group, he compares it with an abstract principle about "the common good." We see, therefore, that, contrary to Efrussi's claim, Sismondi precisely isolates economic phenomena from the rest (by examining protectionism outside its connection with the economic structure) and does not at all understand the connection between economic and socio-political facts. The tirade we have cited contains everything he can offer as a theorist on the question of protectionism: the rest is merely a restatement of this. "It is doubtful whether governments fully understand at what price they purchase this advantage (the development of manufactures) and what terrible sacrifices they impose upon consumers" (I, 442–443). "The governments of Europe wished to do violence to nature" (*faire violence à la nature*). What nature? Is it not the nature of capitalism that protectionism "violates"? "The nation was compelled, so to speak (*en quelque sorte*), to false activity" (I, 448). "Some governments went so far as to pay their merchants in order to enable them to sell more cheaply; the more strange this sacrifice, the more it contradicts the simplest calculations, the more they attribute it to higher policy… Governments pay their merchants at the expense of their subjects" (I, 421), and so on, and so on. This is what sort of reasoning Sismondi treats us to! In other places, drawing what seems to be a conclusion from these reasonings, he calls capitalism "artificial" and "planted" (I, 379, *opulence factice*), "hothouse" (II, 456), and so on. Having begun by substituting innocent wishes for the place of analysis of the given contradictions, he arrives at an outright distortion of reality in favor of these wishes. It turns out that capitalist industry, which is so zealously "supported," is weak, rootless, and so on, does not play a predominant role in the economy of the country, that this predominant role belongs, consequently, to petty production, and so on. That undoubted and indisputable fact that protectionism was created only by a definite economic structure and by the definite contradictions of this structure, that it expresses the real interests of a real class playing a predominant role in the national economy, – has been transformed into nothing, even into its opposite by means of a few touching phrases! Here is another sample (concerning agricultural protectionism – I, 265, chapter on the Corn Laws):

"The English present to us their large farms as the sole means of improving agriculture, that is, of providing themselves with greater abundance of agricultural products at a cheaper price, – yet in reality they, quite the contrary, produce them more expensively…"

Remarkably characteristic is this passage, so strikingly showing those methods of romantic reasoning that have been entirely adopted by Russian Populists! The fact of the development of farming and the technical progress connected with it is depicted as a deliberately introduced system: the English (that is, English economists) present this system of agricultural improvement as the sole means. Sismondi wishes to say that there "could be" other means to raise it apart from farming, that is, once again "could be" in some abstract society, rather than in that real society of a definite historical period, that "society" based on commodity economy, of which English economists speak and of which Sismondi himself ought to have spoken. "Improvement of agriculture, that is, provision of greater abundance of products (for the nation?)." Not at all "that is." Improvement of agriculture and improvement of the nutrition of the masses are not at all the same thing; the failure to coincide of one and the other is not only possible but necessary in such an economic structure that Sismondi wishes with such zeal to argue away from. For example, an increase in potato cultivation may signify a rise in the productivity of labor in agriculture (the introduction of root crops) and an increase in surplus-value – alongside a worsening of the nutrition of workers. This is all the same manner of the Populist… or rather, the romantic – arguing away with phrases the contradictions of actual life.

"In reality," Sismondi continues, "these farmers, so rich, so intelligent, so supported (*secondés*) by every progress of the sciences, whose harnesses are so fine, whose hedges are so strong, whose fields are so clean weeded of weeds, – cannot withstand competition from the wretched Polish peasant, ignorant, crushed by slavery, seeking solace only in drunkenness, whose agriculture still remains in a childish state of the art. Grain harvested in central Poland, having paid freight for hundreds of leagues both by river and by land and by sea, having paid import duties of 30 and 40% of its value, – is still cheaper than grain from the richest counties of England" (I, 265). "English economists are troubled by this contrast." They refer to taxes and so forth. But that is not the matter. "The very system of exploitation is bad, founded on a dangerous basis… This system was recently presented by all writers as an object worthy of our admiration, but we ought, on the contrary, to become thoroughly acquainted with it in order to beware of imitating it" (I, 266).

Is it not true how infinitely naïve is this romantic, presenting English capitalism (farming) as an erroneous system of economists, imagining that the "trouble" of economists, closing their eyes to the contradictions of farming, is a sufficient argument against farmers? How superficial is his understanding, seeking an explanation for economic processes not in the interests of various groups, but in the delusions of economists, writers, governments! The good-natured Sismondi wishes to shame and embarrass English farmers, and with them continental ones, so that they do not "imitate" such "bad" systems!

Do not forget, however, that this was written 70 years ago, that Sismondi observed the first steps of these phenomena that were completely new at that time. His naïveté is still excusable, for the classical economists (his contemporaries) with no less naïveté considered these new phenomena to be products of eternal and natural properties of human nature. But we ask, have our Populists added even a single original word to Sismondi's arguments in their "objections" against developing capitalism in Russia?

Thus, Sismondi's reasonings on protectionism show that he is completely alien to the historical point of view. On the contrary, he reasons in the same manner as philosophers and economists of the eighteenth century, differing from them only in that he declares normal and natural not bourgeois society, but a society of petty independent producers. Therefore he does not at all understand the connection of protectionism with a definite economic structure and gets rid of this contradiction in the socio-political sphere by the same touching phrases about "falseness," "danger," error, unreasonableness, and so on, by which he got rid of contradictions in economic life. Therefore he depicts the matter with extreme superficiality, presenting the question of protectionism and free trade {50} as a question of the "false" and "correct" path (that is, according to his terminology, a question of capitalism or of a non-capitalist path).

The newest theory has fully revealed these delusions, showing the connection of protectionism with a definite historical structure of social economy, with the interests of the class that is dominant in this structure, interests that meet with the support of governments. It has shown that the question of protectionism and free trade is a question between entrepreneurs (sometimes between entrepreneurs of different countries, sometimes between different fractions of entrepreneurs of a given country).

Comparing with these two points of view on protectionism the attitude of Populist economists toward it, we see that they stand entirely, on this question too, from the point of view of the romantics, comparing protectionism not with the capitalist structure, but with some abstract country, with "consumers" *tout court*, declaring it an "erroneous" and "unreasonable" support of "hothouse" capitalism, and so on. In the question, for example, of duty-free import of agricultural machinery, which provokes a conflict between industrial and agricultural entrepreneurs, the Populists, of course, stand firmly for the rural… entrepreneurs. We do not wish to say that they are wrong. But this is – a question of fact, a question of the given historical moment, a question of which fraction of entrepreneurs expresses the more general interests of the development of capitalism. If the Populists are right, it is certainly not because the imposition of duties means "artificial" "support of capitalism," and their reduction – support of the "age-old" national craft, but simply because the development of agricultural capitalism (needing machines), by accelerating the dying out of medieval relations in the village and the creation of an internal market for industry, means a broader, freer, and faster development of capitalism in general.

We foresee one objection regarding this attribution of Populists to romantics on this question. They will perhaps say that here it is necessary to single out Mr. N. —ov, who speaks directly to the effect that the question of free trade and protectionism is a capitalist question, and says this more than once, who even "quotes"… Yes, yes, Mr. N. —ov even quotes! But if they bring us that passage from his *Essays*, we shall bring other passages where he declares the support of capitalism "planting" (and that in *Conclusions and Inferences* too! p. 331, 323, also p. 283), explains the encouragement of capitalism as a "disastrous delusion," that which "we lost sight of," "we forgot," "we were obscured by" and so on (p. 298. Compare with Sismondi!). How is it possible to reconcile this with the assertion that the support of capitalism (through export bounties) is "one of many contradictions that abound in our economic life; it, like all the rest, owes its existence to the form assumed by all production" (p. 286)? Note: all production! We ask any impartial person, from what point of view stands this writer who explains the support of a "form assumed by all production" – as a "delusion"? From the point of view of Sismondi or scientific theory? Mr. N. —ov's "quotations" here too (as in the questions examined above) turn out to be side remarks, clumsy insertions that in no way express the real conviction of the applicability of these "quotations" to Russian reality. Mr. N. —ov's "quotations" – this is a signboard of the newest theory, introducing merely delusion to readers. This is – an awkwardly donned costume of the "realist," behind which hides a purebred romantic [93].